Somehow I think that if this little girl’s name were GARCIA, MARTINEZ, ALVAREZ, RODRIGUEZ, ROMERO, LOPEZ, FERNANDEZ, HERNANDEZ, GONZALES—she’d be allowed to stay in the US of A. Read the story of the impending deportation to Poland of 11-year-old Ewelina Bledniak. (And where-oh-where are the churches and the ACLU?)

If only my own sister were a poor, illiterate, Hispanic scofflaw, sucking at the state’s teat.

Update I (June 11): I’m not sure I can agree entirely with Robert. To an extent he is right: errors and injustices are a function of a lumbering bureaucracy. I think he’ll find, however, that because so many of the bureaucrats are affirmative, or plain illegal, appointees, they often enact their preferences. It is misguided to deny: 1) the tremendous powers of the bureaucracy. 2) That said organ doesn’t exercise these powers energetically. We live under an unrepresentative, managerial state, the kind James Burnham (if I’m correct) wrote about, and certainly our friend Paul Gottfried has covered extensively.

My personal experience: “My daughter was … stripped of her [green card] on a debatable technicality when entering the US from Canada. This took a heroic show of force from the brave, U.S. citizenship and immigration law enforcers at the border. Moral: U.S. immigration law is enforced against people who obey the law. No doubt her hard-won green card was needed urgently for a real Bandido.”

Update II (June 11): So far, I’ve being vindicated. Readers have put down Bledniak’s neglect to nothing more than a “lumbering bureaucracy.” But as I contended, if Bledniak were Banderas, she’d have had CNN’s THELMA GUTIERREZ’s full support.

Tonight, GUTIERREZ went to bat for a “brilliant girl”—so brilliant, she has an “A” in “Race and Gender”—who cannot get you and me to pay for her Harvard degree in Education (worth nothing, clearly), because… wait for it: she’s illegal. However, unlike the Polish cherub, Nancy the Hispanic is not being deported.

The transcripts are here. Just as I surmised in the initial post, Nancy’s equally “brilliant” Harvard professors are LATINAS.

The “matric”—high-school finals—I sat for in Israel was harder than anything this “genius” has done at university. These students graduate from high school without math in the syllabus. Unheard of in my days, if you wanted a university entrance matric. And yes, I will (a little later) inflict on you the kind of core curriculum I was compelled to undertake for the first-rate academic matric I earned in Israel, back in the day.
This Nancy would be relegated to the sewing class—we were streamed into different paths in accordance with academic aptitude in those days. With the kind of nonacademic subjects “Nancy” has taken, GUTIERREZ’s protege would not have qualified to sit the academic finals in my old high-school. But then things have changed in Israel since then too.

To go by the dictionary, and “within the context of political science, big man, big man syndrome, or bigmanism refers to corrupt and autocratic rule of countries by a single person.”

Back in February, Democratic Senator Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.), “a stern constitutional scholar who has always stood up for the legislative branch in its role in checking the power of the White House,” warned about Obama’s executive-branch power grab.

According to Politico, “Byrd complained about Obama’s decision to create White House offices on health reform, urban affairs policy, and energy and climate change. Byrd said such positions ‘can threaten the Constitutional system of checks and balances. At the worst, White House staff have taken direction and control of programmatic areas that are the statutory responsibility of Senate-confirmed officials.'”

Byrd is an old Southern gentleman after whom Republicans are always chasing for his past indiscretions. George Will follows in Byrd’s footsteps in making a similar point, only later in the game, and leveled at a president he did not support.

“The Obama administration is … careless regarding constitutional values and is acquiring a tincture of lawlessness,” writes Will. After detailing the flouting of contracts, the use of TARP as a slush fund, and the bullying of business, Will concludes:

“The Obama administration’s agenda of maximizing dependency involves political favoritism cloaked in the raiment of ‘economic planning’ and ‘social justice’ that somehow produce results superior to what markets produce when freedom allows merit to manifest itself, and incompetence to fail. The administration’s central activity — the political allocation of wealth and opportunity — is not merely susceptible to corruption, it is corruption.”

And an ‘A’ For Al-Jazeera Again.

Two exceptionally bright men, Riz Khan and Amos Oz, talk. If I’m stating the obvious, it’s because it’s rare to see an example of such objective, intelligent journalism in the American news media.

I’m an admirer of Oz’s work. His early books I devoured back in Israel, in Hebrew, naturally. (The man was extremely handsome). Oz is an exceptional writer; his books translate well too. I recommend them.

I’ve always thought of Oz as a dove–a man of the Left. But this is what the old Left used to be: reasonable, patriotic, fair (and manly).
Oz’s use of the English language—a second language—is charming, precise, and colorful. He exemplifies the older Israeli intelligentsia.

It’s a shame I can’t get Al Jazeera. American “news” channels are an example of cretinism (and the “V” factor) in action.

Part I:

Part II:

Speaking of spooky children, the hallmark of a progressive or left-liberal is a philosophical adulation of The Child. The Child is said to possess uncanny prescience; a primordial, pristine, un-spoilt wisdom. The same awe is accorded to the Nobel Savage, and to the natural world.

This explains why Republicans often have a “wunderkind” in the wings to parade and look up to. These days, it’s the barely-out-of short pants CPAC star, Jonathan Krohn, who’s precocious and off-putting. Krohn is an author no less. The treatise is “Define Conservatism.” From the mouth of the babe himself, the book sounds childish and simplistic in tone and in metaphor. Just what Boobus loves.

Understandably, left-liberals have been slobbering over Krohn as well. To their credit, they’ve not produced a prototype of their own yet.

It’s a repulsive specter. It’s not new. I commented on it in a three-pronged column, in 2002. The column is “The Importance Of Boundaries.” The sub-heading is “Crossover Kids”:

“Permissive liberals and people who need Braille to understand a well-aimed barb will fume at the words of author Florence King: ‘…children have no business expressing opinions on anything except, ‘Do you have enough room in the toes?’ But true-blue cultural conservatism puts a premium on the proper boundaries between children and adults. Such boundaries are essential to the moral hygiene of a society. It is from the progressive, libertine parent that we would expect a child of such narcissism and precocity that he or she thinks of adults as his peers, and takes to preaching to his elders.”

“But no, some of the most hubris-stricken kids are emerging as commentators from so-called conservative quarters. The real cultural conservative knows that even in the unlikely case that the child is the new H.L. Mencken, and is smarter than all the adults around him, respect necessitates that he bide his time. Even the intellectually gifted take years to synthesize intellectual material and make it their own. This process is a culmination of insight, life experience, humility, and authentic intelligence.”

“The cultural conservative adult who lets a kid be a pal and peer is a liberal. He cannot claim to be a cultural conservative. He must, moreover, own up to being mired in self-contradiction. Writing on the topic of Western Civilization, historian Alan Charles Kors reminds us that avoiding self-contradiction is the touchstone of truth—being mired in self-contradiction, the touchstone of error. To the Greek philosophers, to be mired in self-contradiction was to be ‘less than human, less than coherent, less than sane.'”

Update (Feb. 28): I just can’t win, can I? The reader hereunder vows to seek out the kid’s coloring-in book in the library. Lost is my meta-argument against the process of looking to a kid for answers, however endowed in IQ he might be.

Seeking sagacity in a child’s words is perverted, unconservative.
The whole point of this post is that you NOT be piqued by a child; that you not be proud of such precocity. Look to real philosopher Kings for eternal truths. Take the time to rediscover The Federalist or Anti-Federalist papers. So long as you have not read the the words of real sages, you have no business looking for kicks in the kibitzing of kids.
Of course, you have every right to, but little reason to.

THEY MUST BE HOMESCHOOLED. Blogger John was alluding to this delightful clip (I’m posting it hereunder), making the rounds on YouTube. Two precious, fiscally conservative cuties hear that they owe $800 billion. The little boy is especially eager to tease out the details, and is outraged when he gets the goods. Unlike creepy, adult-emulating Krohn, these babes act their age, and are absolutely natural. There is nothing put-on or fake about their conduct. These are kids getting some bad news about a stolen piggy bank.

I would agree that children are naturally acquisitive and, like all normal people before entering the public school, guard what is rightfully theirs.

But there’s more to it. What you have here is an example of decent parenting. In fact, this clip very clearly exemplifies the boundary argument made in this post. The adult is teaching the children a lesson about private property and its theft.

I would further argue that the parent eliciting the little people’s outrage by telling them of the $800 billion they are about to be robbed of—he is the good guy in all this. He probably home schools the two tots. This is clearly a man who, while not indoctrinating his kids, does instill in them right from wrong.

Pay attention to the disparaging comments the filming father gets from YouTubers. Addled by psychobabble, posters protest the emotional harm done to the children; the sentiment shared on the chatboard is that upsetting children is wrong.

Well, the clip has been removed. My guess is that the dad who posted it thought Obama’s New New Deal outrageous, and his kids’ outburst appropriate. The cretins watching it disapproved and disagreed with dad. Maybe father feared Big Brother would removed his kids. … Not that it has happened before.